Zeddophile

There was a BOC Mig 190c Industrial nearly brand new on Ebay for about $500 the other day, and I was seriously considering it - the thing that put me off was the low duty cycle. However, I can forsee myself ending up welding something big (like 10mm plate or similar) at some stage for whatever reason. For using on panels and smaller guage stuff, the 190c should be fine. If you wanted lower minimum amperage, are they clearing out the 170p as well? BOC are APPARENTLY just rebadged Kemppi welders - which if its true, makes them a bloody good investment. However, never been able to confirm this one, so take with a grain of salt. Personally I'd steer clear for home use.... The whole inverter thing is still fairly new, and ultimately they just aren't as reliable YET. The name brands are pretty good, but you'll pay for it. Inverters are also bloody expensive to repair, control boards start at over a grand, and the chinese machines tend to drop them after a year or two. Not much to go wrong in a transformer machine - its mostly just a bunch of copper wire, and its amazing how many 30-40 year old transformer welders you find still in daily use in industry. Newer transformer machines do tend to have electronic control panels, which are expensive if they spit it, but they have less than an inverter. As far as actual welding performance, the power output is comparable, although I think they have a wider range (ie. go to lower amps). Some guys reckon the inverter TIGs just don't run as smoothly as transformer units (start much more aggresively, and a bit less stable in the arc), and I imagine the same would apply to mig, but I've never played with an inverter machine myself, only transformer machines. The weight of an inverter is a definite advantage though - actually being able to pick up and carry around over 200amps of welding power is pretty awesome... I have two 250amp transformer machines in the garage at the moment (my Kemppi TIG and a mates UniMIG), and they are both most certainly a 2 person lift! Being able to pick one up with one hand and stroll up the back yard to fix the damn sagging gate would be awesome, but just ain't going to happen with my machines! At the end of the day, for the average home user who wants to do a bit of panel work and the occasional bench or something, a good brand transformer MIG up to near 200 amps is something they'll probably have for 30 years, and will do everything they ever need. If you need to upgrade to a bigger machine at a later date, and you bought a good brand one now, you'll still sell the little machine for good money - just have a look on Ebay to see what I mean, the good brands hold value. You'll also get a lot more grunt for dollar out of a transformer at the moment over an inverter (to my mind anyway, everytime I get tempted by a nice little Kemppi Miniarc, I just look at the size transformer machine I could buy for half the price).

This is an excellent point - if you're going to be over there for another 12 months, this would be a good option....

The mixtures changing can definitely happen if it hasn't been configured right. Heat soak on the intake air sensor is a common cause of that one, but there are plenty of others. With a good tune, it will drive like a standard car every day (and better, if the standard car had an L-jetronic or similar on it!) As far as the resistors go, the first of the Range Rover efi setups (L-Jetronic) actually have a resistor pack for the injectors as standard.... Was convenient when I put MS on it

Megasquirts are fine - run one on my rangie, and also on my GTV (3.0 quadcam V6 with ITBS and coilpacks). Not too hard to setup, as long as you have some understanding of wiring.

Right down to the somewhat dodgy looking trailer! Nicely played sir.

I'm probably the only one, but I reckon it looks spot on at the height it is - especially for a daily driver. Looking great steve, you've put some serious effort into her since you started, and shes a real head turner!

Looking fantastic! Now, which of the 3 cars I have around here in need of paint should I do first.... The one in primer? The one thats full of 'ventilation' holes? Or the one that the paint is falling off.... Dammit Steve, look what you've gone and done!

That sucks mate - you must be gutted....

What he said. Especially on a carby car, an aftermarket immobiliser is easy to bypass, and I'd hazard a guess that I'm among quite a few guys on this forum that could achieve this. Failing that, drag it away.... This is about the only 'sure fire' way to immobilise the car - having EFI with the immobiliser component integrated into the engine ECU.

Not sure why everyone is assuming that its a Zed.... Matt has only said 'a car'. Is it not just as possible to be some sort of American muscle, for example? I don't know either way, but for me I didn't immediately think a zed......

Errr.... No. Suggest you do a little reading if you want to find out why. You could try, but it'll still have P-plates, and its still a Soarer. If you want something that the cops will hassle you less in, you're probably better to go for something european, for some reason (in my experience) they seem to hassle euro cars with P-plates less than Japanese cars and dunnydoors - unless of course its a well known performance euro. Of course, euro cars generally cost more money to look after, as they don't take neglect/lack of maintenance as well as Jap/Aussie cars.

Aren't you on P plates? In which case a Soarer would be a fantastic way to have to stop on every block for the cops to hassle you, not to mention they're surely on the 'not allowed' list....

There seems to be a lot of talk about making young drivers have 'cheap, low performance cars'. Sorry to say guys, that really doesn't make it any harder to hoon. For the older ones among you, think about how much power your first car had, and then think about the stupid things I'm sure most of you did in them. Sure, you may not be able to do a massive burnout from a standing start, or hit 200km/h, but you give me one of those crappy early 90's Corollas (the round tail FWD things), with a clapped out motor, the 3 speed auto, and a broken handbrake cable, and I'll still be able to get it bulk sideways. Cheap econoboxes have cheap econobox road holding. And for those who don't know how to provoke lift off oversteer, they always have the option of going to McDonalds and borrowing some trays, now don't they. Although I suppose then the government can ban McDonalds from serving food on plastic trays, and everyone will be safe again (seems to be the way Australia is going, following America down the drain). Doesn't matter what the car is, if the intent is there to be an idiot, there's always something stupid that can be done with a car. Thats why its driver ATTITUDE that needs adjustment.

Could not possibly agree more. It needs to be compulsory to attend and successfully complete to the satisfaction of qualified instructors at least one racetrack/skidpan based advanced driving course (and preferably two or three,). Most of the time when I say this, people look at me like I'm an idiot, and then ask how the government is going to subsidise that. My answer? Forget government subsidies on this - if they want their licence, pay for it. If they arrive at a driving course that costs them say $300 to attend, with the knowledge that they'll have to do it and pay again if they fail, they might actually pay attention to what is going on and learn something. And of course, if they continually fail, they won't be able to afford to keep trying endlessly. Its not just limited to kids getting their licences either, I would love to be in charge of a road safety program. I'd start by sitting in an unmarked car on the freeways, and pull over these idiots that sit one car length behind the one in front at 100km/h, send them off to a special facility to drive their own car around a course at their normal follow distance behind a heavily reinforced truck, which just so happens to have heavily uprated brakes and can stop just as quick as any late model car. There would be a lot of drivers going home on the back of tow trucks with rearranged cars... They might actually realise the stupidity of what they are doing then though.

You need both clutch and brake pedals, but the boxes are generally the same. Seems the OP is already aware of this though, if you read his post again...

Sounds like it should be blue, with a 3.1 litre stroker, two turbos and triple carbs, and flares. Make sure the Devil Z gets scrapped!

why not buy one from overseas already assembled? I don't think you are going to save much by buying one someone has already put together, having done 3 myself I wouldn't sell one much cheaper than buying from America, simply due to the amount of time and eyestrain involved.

For some reason, there's a big sense of achievement in getting a screen in without breaking it, isn't there! (well, for the first couple anyway). Well done!

You mean like this? http://www.viczcar.com/forum/index.php/topic,5140.0.html

Ahh, so that's what those guys do.... Go past them every day. As far as a wiring harness goes, it may well be cheaper to buy one or get an auto elec to copy a standard one than to make it yourself - buying that many different coloured wires is expensive, otherwise I'd have a nice shelf full of the stuff. I think a brand the Americans often use is called 'Painless', never had a look at their stuff though. The other option which I've used for EFI harnesses before, is to grab some complete secondhand looms out of a car, and start cutting! Advantage is you get some nice plugs to use, and just need a few new terminals to make it work.

As others have said, pretty straightforward bolt in swap. Just make sure if the L28 is out of an auto and your car is manual, that you fit a spigot bush in the crank, and obviously swap the flywheel + clutch over! The worst things if you keep the EFI is working out where you want to hide the ECU, what to do about mounting the air flow metre and air filter, and for some people working out what wires to connect to what. Also having to setup the fuel system for EFI is a little time consuming.

Seriously guys, you've got the welder and some steel, you couldn't be bothered spending an hour or so to knock up a proper rotisserie ;D? And I think your angle gauge needs calibrating, that's GOT to be more than 45 degrees!

I have no idea what the hell I'd use it for, but I'm kind of tempted to grab this one and stash it for a rainy day.... Someone please buy it and save me from my hoarding obsession....

Being the gippsland car club, and not tied to any one make of car, I guess that means that they'll sign off on any model of car too. Good to know... I suspect some of the other car clubs may also have such a scrutineer, but was thinking that if it were for example the BMW club, that they'd only sign off on BMWs... Sounds like you've had first hand experience or knowledge of someone being defected on club plates there too, which unfortunately confirms my other thought.

You still need a RWC to get the club plates as far as I'm aware (unless it falls into a hotrod category), and the cars are SUPPOSED to be roadworthy condition, so technically speaking you could probably still get defected on club plates if they chose to..... There is an option to have a 'club scrutineer' write a notice to say that your car is safe, but I don't know which clubs, if any, actually have such a scrutineer in place. The Alfa club definitely takes the approach of making you get a roadworthy, so that no-one has the responsibility of declaring a vehicle safe and getting reamed for a car coming back deemed unsafe....